1. Technical Field
Embodiments described herein relate to processors. In particular, embodiments described herein relate to the evaluation of hash algorithms with processors.
2. Background Information
Hash functions or algorithms are a type of cryptographic algorithm that are widely used in computer systems and other electronic devices. The hash algorithms generally take a message as an input, generate a corresponding hash value or digest by applying the hash function to the message, and output the hash value or digest. Typically, the same hash value should be generated if the same hash function is evaluated with the same message. Such hash algorithms are used for various purposes, such as for verification (e.g., verifying the integrity of files, data, or messages), identification (e.g., identifying files, data, or messages), authentication (e.g., generating message authentication codes), generating digital signatures, generating pseudorandom numbers, and the like. As one illustrative example, a hash function may be used to generate a hash value for a given message. At a later time, a hash value may be recomputed for the given message using the same hash function. If the hash values are identical, then it can be assumed that the message hasn't been changed. In contrast, if the hash values are different, then it can be assumed that the message has been changed.
One known type of hashing algorithm is the SM3 hash function. The SM3 hash algorithm has been published by the Chinese Commercial Cryptography Association Office and approved by the Chinese government. The SM3 hash algorithm has been specified as the hashing algorithm for the TCM (Trusted Computing Module) by the China Information Security Standardization Technical Committee (TC260) initiative. An English language description of the SM3 hash function has been published as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Internet-Draft entitled “SM3 Hash Function,” by S. Shen and X. Lee, on Oct. 24, 2011.